


Too Hot to Trot

by theapplekeeper (Deunan)



Series: Writerverse [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen, and might just be pre-Iron Bull/F!Inquisitor, she might just boycott deserts after this, the Inquisitor is miserable, the Inquisitor thinks her companions are sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-01 01:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4000189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deunan/pseuds/theapplekeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hissing Wastes is a terrible place to be.</p><p>(Or: In which the Inquisitor is not a desert lizard, her companions are too sexy given the circumstances, and she’d kill for an oasis.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Too Hot to Trot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJcomm Writerverse and their Challenge #26: Weekly Quick Fic #9 (word prompt: Sand).

It had taken them a fortnight to get this far west, and each mile the trip had only gotten worse. She’s never been to the Hissing Wastes before and she’s not coming back voluntarily. Ever. It’s a miserable place, with absolutely no selling points, and she doesn’t know how anything survives in a climate so volatile.  
  
An unclouded day had boiled leather, had boiled her and her nose and forehead and her ears-- her ears of all things! The cowl wasn’t just there for decoration. It promised protection. She feels cheated.  
  
Oh,  _balls_. She’s already peeling. Leaving bits of skin behind as if she was molting. Like a lizard. She wasn’t a lizard, okay Big Absent God-Creator-Spirit-Entity in the Fade-Stone-Sky-Gold/Black Place? Skin is supposed to stay on her person. At all times.  
  
But that’s fine. She mightn’t appreciate the trail of skin-flakes left in her wake like she was a blossomed tree hit by autumn wind. (Which is a better way of putting it than thinking herself a lizard, but only  _just._ ) She could still deal with it.  
  
Really, she could.  
  
Even when Vivienne used the last of the sun balm and was all: “Oh, I’m sorry my dear, were you needing this specialized crème from the absolutely brilliant Orleasian inventor so-and-so?”  
  
And she could even understand Iron Bull and Dorian just walking around like they were lizards, soaking in blistering sun and heat and looking not one bit uncomfortable. They had the background for it and if she was jealous, then it was only situationally so and extended no further—as if onto their lack of heavy clothes, or their ridiculous non-armor, or the way they glistened with sweat.  
  
Because her companions in this heat? Sexy. Sexy sweating was a thing, apparently. It highlighted muscle and all those broad shirtless shoulders and those strong, strong arms. Okay, Dorian was sexy. But Iron Bull? Mmm. She even caught Vivienne throwing admiring glances, but then sexy sweating had to have been in the court approved repertoire because the Circle Mage was working it, too.  
  
It must be a skill. Like crying pretty. Trevelyan could never manage  _that_  either.  
  
But she could deal with it. Deal with all of it. And had. Rather gracefully, thank you, right up until they made camp and she tried to get out of her leathers. Tried, because the metal fasteners had melted the ties and she was stuck.  
  
“I could cut you out of it, Boss. Might even like it.”  
  
She took back every positive thing she ever thought about the Qunari. She was hot, and sticky, and smelled so strongly she offend herself and all she really wanted to do was wash up in the puddle of an oasis they didn’t have and then sleep away a sen’night. She was not feeling sexy, not feeling the over-the-top flirting, and she was so not feeling like responding to him with anything more than a glower.  
  
So she did. Glower, that is, because she was miserable here and come tomorrow she would have to get up and do this all over again.  
  
_Balls_.


	2. Bedding Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've made camp for the night and Trevelyan takes the coveted slot of First Watch.
> 
> (Or: In which the Inquisitor is still too hot, still surrounded by sand, and so not amused.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for LJ comm Writerverse and their Challenge #35: This is How It Ends (ending sentence prompt: He’d come up with something later.)

She took First Watch, because at that point, she needed something to go her way. First Watch was cushy. First Watch is horded and bargained for and traded only when nothing else would let you keep enough clothes for dignity when someone calls your bluff in Wicked Grace. It was practically a no-watch-at-all because the main goal is setting up camp for the night and it’s a job shared by all. With the tents up, all that’s left is three hours of actual watch, and seven hours of gloriously uninterrupted sleep.   
  
By dent of being the Inquisitor, and the first to actually say something, First Watch was hers. If it wasn’t glorious, it was, at least, something of a relief.  _Something of_  because she was still too hot in her under-armor. Still sweating, even, despite just sitting on a wind shorn bolder doing little more than breathing.   
  
Dorian had passed around dinner, the cheap version of meat-of-a-stick: desert fennic flash-fried with a delicate seasoning of scorched sand and burnt grass. A spell going wide, half-past lunch. But in a desert with a thousand mile visibility they couldn’t afford an actual campfire for stew. Still, magic saved them from gnawing at hard-tack.  
  
Magic saved them from dehydration, too. But beyond that lovely and absolutely given fact, she was this-close to asking Vivienne to slap down some ice wards and jumping in for the luxury of a bath. She was sure it would work. Never mind the hundred shattered bits of Venitori three dunes away that might have tried the very same and froze wonderfully for a shield bash instead.  
  
Vivienne was too damn good, and magic so blessedly useful, that there had to be a tweak to get her clean.   
  
When she decided enough was enough, it was Dorian who had the answer.   
  
And Trevelyan wasn’t impressed. At all. Getting naked and rolling around in the sand had so much of an Iron Bull flavor to it that she thought him jesting at first. But no. Sand bath. It’s a thing.   
  
A thing she does. Mostly. She scrubs her scalp and her arms and her neck because that’s pretty much all she can get to without flashing the camp. Iron Bull still whistles and volunteers his hands for her back. (A little cooler and not quite so miserable, she’s almost tempted. Then visions of a desert oasis and Iron Bull take over and she’s pretty much sold on the idea of a reenactment. But later. Much later. With some privacy and an actual oasis.) When Vivienne helps her instead, with naught but a raised brow at the Qunari who turns around and gives them privacy, Trevelyan knows she had to have looked wrecked.   
  
But it… it helps. It almost feels like a fine layer of powder, really. Once she got past the prickly abrasiveness that left her skin tingling. Exfoliating. Yes Dorian, this is one she actually knows about. Southern nobles are somewhat persnickety about hygiene, no matter how long or hard one argues otherwise.   
  
Or maybe that was just her family. Cleanliness is next to divinity, and all that rot.  
  
Regardless, she’s not quite sure how she feels about what just happened, but she’s not sticky, she can’t smell herself, and she’s starting to cool.  
  
So she’s going to chew on an elf-root leaf to head off the worst of the day’s burn, wait out the next three hours in watchful silence, and take it as a win.   
  
As to how she’ll make it through tomorrow? Well, she’ll come up with something later.

 


	3. A Little Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's cold, she's having an allergic reaction to her blanket, and she can't get to sleep.
> 
> (Or: In which things are looking up because The Iron Bull is a _cuddler_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for LJcomm Writerverse and their Challenge #23: Weekly Quick Fic #8 (word prompt Crimson; bonus points for 500+words).

So the sun went down. Which is fine. Normal, even. It’s supposed to go down. Only with the sun gone the desert had become a barren wasteland of miserable cold. There was a breeze, too. One that she would have quite happily killed for mid-day. But now? Now she just wants it to stop.

She spent the last hour of watch pacing, a slow prowl that used all her non-existent roguish skill. Each step carefully eased into, muscles just so, and always ( _always_ ) on the toe-pads of booted soles. It kept her quiet enough as she went around the campsite feinting theft. Kept her focused. Almost kept her warm.

Skin that radiated heat pimpled in the air now chilled as burns on new skin often did. It left her with the promise of an uncomfortable night. Well, that and the muscle fatigue. 

She was ready to put the whole thing behind her in favor of sleep. More than, really, which was fortunate given the hour. When Dorian relieved her of watch, she ducked into her tent and settled down to bed with hopeful zeal. Hope that sleep would take care of many aches and pains. Hope that sleep would fight away the cold and the knowledge they had another eight days of desert-marching till the rendezvous at forward camp.

The light highweave blanket sold with the premises of _‘comfort and practically for the experienced desert traveler’_ kept her from freezing, but that was all she could say about it. What she wouldn’t say was that it managed to irritate both new and dead skin, that with any sort of pressure it cut into her arms, her hand, her cheek and wove its pattern onto her person. Also? It made her eyes itch. She’s pretty sure she’s allergic to the dye. She went with red, because blood, because she’s a warrior and often a mess. This will teach her not to let logic distract her and simply go with her favorite color; blue, it’s never let her down.

With a grumble she pushed the sheet back down, rolled to her other side, and frowned at the tent wall.

“One fluffy fennic frolicking,” she only sort of said. “Two fluffy fennic frolicking. Three fluffy fennic frolicking.” _Four fluffy fennic frolicking_ , she continued as a thought. _Five fluffy fennic frolicking. Six frocking fennic fluffy- wait. Balls._

With a huff she pulled her knees up and decided to fake sleep till it came for her.

It didn’t, of course. But that was okay, because Iron Bull came for her instead. 

He was warmer than any blanket. And his hands? Yeah, softer than thought. Though, that was probably more soft-touch than soft-skin, because she felt callouses, and _oh yeah_ , they worked for her too.

And she finds with night’s chill gone and her muscles relaxed from kneading hands that sleep isn’t as elusive as it had been when alone. So she sleeps, ear on bared chest and she _doesn’t_ drool anywhere on her living pillow.

She does snore though. Her sleep was too deep and undisturbed for her to not have. She’s only a little embarrassed in the morning, because there hadn’t been any talking, not really, and she’s pretty sure this is something that needed to be addressed before the morning after. But then it was hardly a morning after because all they did last night was cuddle. 

The Iron Bull gives good cuddles. Who knew? Well, she does now. It’s not something she can unknow.

The ribbing she gets from Dorian in the morning is totally worth it. Worth everything. 

Okay. Maybe not everything. She still hates the Wastes. Hates them with a passion and would let rifts swallow the sand and sun and not have a second of remorse. Only she can’t. Doesn’t. Because she’s the bloody Inquisitor with a list of Things That Just Won’t Do and losing ground and resources is at the top of that. 

So she sets out like she has for a week, cursing the stupid shinny shards that she had taken to collect because it’s lead her west.


End file.
